Susan Krinard - Night Quest

And that was why this had happened, Garret thought bitterly. Timon had paid for the colony’s philosophy of nonviolence and indiscriminate acceptance of every potential settler. Garret had no compunction about using deadly force to save him.

If Roxana had been alive, she would have done the same. Timon was all he had left, the only thing in the world that gave meaning and purpose to what remained of his life.

I will get him back, Roxana, he promised.

He set out again, though dawn was still hours away. Rain turned to sleet with the unseasonable cold. The moon was bright enough for him to see by, but he didn’t need to rely on it completely. He’d spent years not only honing his body and skills to fight enemy Nightsiders, but also in developing his senses of hearing and touch to help him move in darkness. The night would never be his element, but he had long ago reached a truce with it.

As darkness gave way to sunlight, he moved more quickly. As each day passed, the trail had led him deeper into wild country that seemed to grow colder with every mile, far from any human Enclave, Nightsider Citadel or free colony.

Time and again, he lost the trail and then picked it up, losing ground by night and gaining by day. Along the way he found the bodies of solitary humans drained of blood, their hollow shells cast aside, and each time he spoke a few brief words over the dead before he forced himself onward. His supply of dried foods shrank steadily, but he didn’t dare search for some isolated homestead or settlement to replenish his stores. He sought clean streams to fill his canteen, gathered edible greens and caught whatever game he could find.

At the end of the second week, his stomach hollow and his gait uneven with exhaustion, he knew he had fallen far behind. Still he drove himself on. He began to see more human settlements—not mixed colonies, like Avalon, but high-walled, paramilitary compounds with heavily armed militias whose sole purpose seemed to be hunting down and killing rogue Freebloods. Garret avoided them, as he had avoided the less warlike settlements he passed.

Fifteen minutes before dawn on the first morning of the third week, near what used to be the city of Eugene, he heard the distant sound of a woman’s scream.

He didn’t pause to think. Dropping to his knees, he shrugged out of his pack and removed the components of the VS. With shaking hands he assembled the rifle and looped its strap over his shoulder. If the woman was being harassed by Nightsiders, the Vampire Slayer might be all that stood between her and an ugly death.

* * *

The sound of a twig snapping brought Artemis to attention. She grabbed her bow, her hunt unfinished, and ran toward the denser forest and one of the many refuges she had built for herself in the area she had chosen as her territory.

If it hadn’t been for her hunger, she might have been clearheaded enough to notice the humans before she ran into them. If there had been one less human, she might have taken them down before they trapped her.

But there were five, all armed with automatic rifles, and they had thrown the wire netting over her before she could do more than raise her hands. Each segment of the weighted net was razor sharp, and though a thousand small cuts couldn’t kill an Opir, the damage would prevent her escape.

“You were right, Coleman,” one of the men said. “Never would have believed we’d find a female bloodsucker living alone out here.” He looked at the sky. “Just about sunrise. We might still get her back—”

“Why?” a younger man asked, holding his section of the net with thickly gloved hands. “She ain’t no spy.”

“Dean’s right,” a third human said. “She wouldn’t be out here alone near sunrise if she was. She won’t have no useful intel. Might as well take care of her here.”

Artemis barely heard their voices. The wire burned wherever it touched her skin and sliced through her clothing, but she tried to focus on calculating her best means of escape. One of these humans would surely be careless enough to loosen his grip on the net, giving her a few seconds to fight her way out. Blood loss might be great, but if she could grab even one of these monsters...

“Watch out!” the first male said as she lunged toward the loosest part of the net.

“Burn her!”

Something jabbed against Artemis’s neck, and a paralyzing shock jolted her nerves and froze her muscles. She felt her useless body being dragged across the ground and through the mud, the wires cutting deeper as the humans found a patch of dry earth far from any hint of shade.

The sky had grown pale in the east. The sun was minutes away from rising, and her body ignored every command her brain tried to send it. She was aware of increasing pain as the humans jostled the net and anchored it to the ground, driving stakes into the earth to pin its edges so tight and close that she wouldn’t find even the smallest opening.

Still, she tried. The paralysis broke, and she flung herself up and against the stinging web, cutting what remained of her clothes to ribbons and shredding the skin of her hands while the guttural laughter of the humans echoed inside her skull.

Then they stepped back, denying her what little shelter their shadows might provide, and watched the first rays of the sun strike her bleeding fingers.

She didn’t intend to scream. She fought it with all the discipline and self-control she had learned both in the Citadel and as an exile in the wilderness.

But her own cry deafened even the laughter of the humans, and the last thing she saw was the bright hair of a man with green eyes blazing like emeralds in the rising sun.

* * *

For a few fleeting seconds Garret considered the possibility of leaving the Opir woman to her fate. There were five men, all carrying modified assault rifles, and numerous knives and bladed weapons. It would be impossible to approach them without being seen.

He’d faced similar odds before and met them head-on. But he had expected a human woman, not a Freeblood. For all he knew, the female might be among the most vicious rogues in this patch of wilderness, as bad as those who had taken his son.

And if anything were to happen to him now, there would be no one to look for Timon. No one to save him from whatever fate the rogues intended for him.

But the militiamen were torturing the woman, and that was far beyond the pale of what Garret could accept. He had no doubt of what Roxana would have done if she were here.

Kneeling behind a screen of shrubs, Garret separated the VS into its component parts and returned them to his pack. Raising his hands above his head, he walked out into the clearing. Almost as one, the militiamen lifted their rifles and pointed them at his chest.

“Human,” Garret said in his mildest voice, trying to ignore the muffled moans of the Opir woman in the net. “Peace.”

Two of the men lowered their rifles. The others held steady. The eldest of the bunch, grizzled and scarred, stepped forward.

“Who are you?” he demanded, his hand on the butt of his hunting knife.

“My name is Garret Fox,” Garret said. “I’m looking for my son, who was taken by rogue bloodsuckers.” He glanced at the Freeblood in the net. “Have you seen any children in the area?”

The leader looked at his comrades. They shook their heads.

“We ain’t seen no kids outside our compound,” he said, his eyes narrow with suspicion. “Or any bloodsuckers except this one.” He kicked at the body curled up on the ground, and Garret fought the instinct to stop him. “Your son, you said? Where you from?”

Garret estimated that he had no more than a few minutes before the sun was high enough to kill the Nightsider woman. He didn’t have time for conversation.